http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-07/15/article04.shtml
The extrajudicial killings by Israel are pushing the situation to explosion edge. (Reuters)
Six Palestinians were killed Friday, July 15, in two simultaneous Israeli aerial raids on Gaza Strip and the West Bank, prompting the Palestinian Authority to accuse Israel of “dangerous escalation”.
Four members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas were killed when an Israeli helicopter carried out a missile strike on a van traveling in an eastern district of Gaza City, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
Witnesses said they saw a missile slam into a small van, devastating the vehicle and sending shrapnel soaring into the air.
Palestinian medical sources said five civilians, including a child, were also wounded in the Israeli raid.
An AFP journalist and witnesses said a headless corpse, M-16s, fragments of militant rockets and torn, bloodied pieces of human flesh littered the road after the Gaza explosion as volunteers ferried body parts to hospital.
Hamas armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, told AFP that four the members killed in the Israeli raid were Hassem Abu Ras, Adel Hanyiah, Saber Abu Assi and Amjad Arafat.
An Israeli army spokesman confirmed the air strike, claiming that the four Palestinians had been transporting explosives through Gaza City when their van was hit by rockets fired by an Israeli helicopter.
More Killings
The Palestinian Authority accuses Israel of seeking to undermine any hopes of peace. (Reuters)
Just moments earlier, Israeli helicopters had fired three rockets near the town of Salfit, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, killing two members of Hamas and wounding another.
Witnesses said three missiles were fired at a car in a mountainous area between the settlement of Ariel and the Palestinian town of Salfit.
“I saw two helicopters firing three missiles in the area of Wadi Al-Shaer (mountain), then they sprayed the area with heavy machine gunfire. Usually men wanted by Israel hide there,” local resident Al-Watheq Billah, told Reuters by telephone.
Medical sources in Salfit said Mohammed Marie, a leader from the Qassam Brigades in the area, was cut to pieces in the blast.
Palestinian security sources said the dead had been wanted by the Israeli army for two years as they were local leaders of the Hamas armed wing.
“They were important leaders in the Qassam Brigades in Salfit. They were shot by Israeli Apache helicopters,” a security source told AFP.
Before dawn Friday, an Israeli helicopter carried out three raids on northern Gaza Strip.
The latest deaths raised the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian Intifada to 4,794, including 3,720 Palestinians and 998 Israelis, according to an AFP count.
Condemnation
The Palestinian Authority condemned the Israeli attacks as a “dangerous escalation”, saying Israel is trying to destroy its own efforts to impose the rule of the law in the chaotic occupied territories.
“We strongly condemn the dangerous Israeli escalation. At the same time that the Palestinian Authority is trying to impose the law, Israel wants to destroy all those such efforts,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to preserve the shaky ceasefire with Israel, managed to convince resistance factions in March to observe a “period of calm” conditional on Israel ending its aggressions against them.
Since then, the calm has been put to the test several times in view of continued Israeli violations.
Over the past three months, many Palestinians were killed and wounded by Israeli gunfire, drawing retaliatory mortar and rocket attacks from Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
Inter-Palestinian Fighting Kills Two
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-07/15/article02.shtml
Palestinian youth stand near burnt police vehicle in the clashes between security forces and Hamas members. (Reuters)
GAZA – Two Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in clashes between the Palestinian security forces and members of the military wing of the Islamic resistance group Hamas in Gaza Strip Friday, July 15.
“One civilian was killed and a total of 16 injured, several of them seriously,” a doctor at a Gaza hospital told Agence France Presse (AFP).
One of the dead was identified as Ismail al-Amarin, 17. Doctors later pronounced a 15-year-old boy dead, saying he too had been shot in the head.
Palestinian medical sources said six of the wounded were members of the security forces and the rest were civilians, some of whom were caught in the crossfire in the densely populated neighborhood of Al-Zeitoun, Reuters said.
It was not immediately clear whether the fatal shots were fired by Palestinian security officers or Hamas members.
During the in-fighting, Hamas members torched three security force jeeps as acrid smoke engulfed the air, witnesses told Reuters.
The fighting was the worst among Palestinians since the mid-1990s when Palestinian police killed more than a dozen protesters in clashes with stone-throwers outside a Hamas-stronghold mosque.
Blame
Palestinians wheel into hospital a victim hurt in the fighting. (Reuters)
Palestinian Interior Ministry, on its part, heaped the blame on Hamas for firing on the Palestinian police.
Denying any role in fueling the clashes, the resistance group, for its part, demanded the sacking of Interior Minister, Nasr Yussuf.
“We are asking for the dismissal of the interior minister because keeping him in his dangerous job will be very dangerous for Palestinian unity,” Hamas said in a statement faxed to the AFP.
“What is happening in Gaza is a dangerous crime against our people and was directly ordered by the interior minister… What is happening is part of Nasr Yussef’s plan to destroy resistance.”
Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri told Al-Jazeera the clashes were not spontaneous but were a deliberate attempt by the Palestinian Authority to prevent the resistance group from “defending the Palestinian people against Israel aggression”.
Hesaid Palestinian security forces have clear instructions to use force, including open fire, to block any attempt to fire missiles against Israel.
“The Palestinian Authority should seek to protect the Palestinian people, not the Israeli settlements,” he said.
He, however, affirmed that the resistance group remained committed to the truce, stressing “the truce must be respected by theboth sides”.
On Alert
The clashes erupted Thursday night and resumed Friday after Yussef put security forces and police on high alert to “prevent by force if necessary all firing of rockets and mortars” against Israeli targets.
Palestinian resistance men fired rockets into southern Israel Thursday, killing an Israeli woman, and Palestinian police then confronted them in an effort to prevent further barrages.
Palestinian resistance groups said the rocket attack was in retaliation of the killing of a Palestinian man in an Israeli raid in the West Bank Thursday, part of an Israeli offensive against Islamic Jihad’s attack at a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Netanya, which left five Israelis killed.
Israeli Raids
Before dawn Friday, an Israeli helicopter carried out three raids on northern Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army said an Israeli helicopter fired a missile, destroying a pro-Hamas charity in Gaza and another struck a weapons depot.
Two other helicopters hit a metal foundry and a storage room in a home in Gaza, according to witnesses.
The Israeli army also said Gaza would be “cut into three parts”, effectively blocking main roads to Palestinian travel.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to preserve the shaky ceasefire with Israel, managed to convince resistance factions in March to observe a “period of calm” conditional on Israel ending its aggressions against them.
Since then, the calm has been put to the test several times in view of continued Israeli violations.
Over the past three months, many Palestinians were killed and wounded by Israeli gunfire, drawing retaliatory mortar and rocket attacks from Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.